Terminator 5 Gets Two New Screenwriters

The fifth installment is coming from the people who brought you Shutter Island and… Drive Angry?

Today comes the first news in months that the fifth installment in the hit sci-fi/action franchise is actually moving forward, with not one but two screenwriters attached to the project, according to Deadline. These writers have many individual credits but have never worked together before, and their films don't seem to have any direct connection thematically, tonally or even really in terms of genre. We'd love to get in the room with these two as they're working, because Laeta Kalogridis brought you Shutter Island and Alexander, and Patrick Lussier co-wrote and directed the balls-to-the-wall Nicolas Cage fantasy thriller Drive Angry.

Patrick Lussier may be the one to pay close attention to here, since he's never written a script to a film he didn't direct, and – as far as we know – Terminator 5 is still in search of a director after Fast Five's Justin Lin left the project in 2011. Lussier has never directed a hit before, but then again, neither had James Cameron when he directed the original Terminator in 1984. It's hard to imagine that his name isn't at least in the hat to helm Terminator 5, but then again, that's just speculation.

Laeta Kalogridis may be best known for writing high-profile films for Oscar winners Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone, but she's got her genre credentials as well. Kalogridis was one of the writers on the short-lived "Bionic Woman" reboot for NBC, the (also short-lived) "Birds of Prey" series for The CW, and is currently slated to write Battle Angel, the manga adaptation that James Cameron has been developing for years and, supposedly, might actually get to when he's done with the Avatar sequels.

As for the plot, all we know is that there's supposedly a role for Arnold Schwarzenegger, and that producer Megan Ellison insists that it will be rated R, "as God and James Cameron intended."